Censorship??

[SweetCherry]

OK, here I was this morning doing my ritual of surfing and listening to my local radio station. The news came on and i tried to ignore it as usual, but unfortunately, I couldn't tune it out this morning. This just ticked me off!

It seems a certain college bookstore has taken a few magazines off the shelf, since a teacher found them offensive. Among them was Stuff and Maxim. OK, now I can't ever say that I have read either of them, so maybe I'm not the best judge, but the way I see it, if a college is starting to pull things off the shelves, then we have a BIG pronlem. Aren't these the places where people g for education and enlightenment? If they start pulling magazines that someone finds offensive, how long is it going to be before they decide that certain courses offered are offensive, or before they start editing the text books?

Then again, maybe I'm just ranting at something that pisses me off. I resent ANYONE telling me or anybody else what we can and cannot read. It's a matter of choice. And it's something that shouldn't be chosen for us!

OK, I've said my piece. Please return to your regularly scheduled activities of Monday morning!

 

[Andra_Jenny]

We have gone so far from the premise, I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it to that offends me, I don't like it, and I'm gonna find some other people to shout real loud with me until you can't do or say that anymore.

AMERIKA AUCHTUNG!

 

[Ambrosious]

I'm afraid it is going to get worse before it starts to get better.

GA and SC changed their state flags, a 60 year old murder is being reopened, and other ludicrous incidents are happening daily, because it doesn't "feel good" to someone.

What scares me the most, more than censorship, is hate crime legistlation. I'll explain.

Murder someone and it is bad, you get punished.
Murder someone and call them faggot while doing it, you get punished twice as hard.

Isn't murder murder, no matter who you kill?

Why should government feel free to censor books and magazines?
Because they told us how to THINK and got away with it, hate crimes are crimes against THOUGHTS. We pretty much handed big brother the reins on that one.

 

[R Nitelight]

Can this thread be censored before tony_gam reads it?
I know it will enrage him.

 

[Ambrosious]

censored

 

[TonyG]

Just Found It

SweetCherry
If you provide me with the name of the college bookstore I will be sure to write to them, together with the college President, about their idiotic choice of magazine removal. I mean if any mag should be removed it should be Cosmo. Now that is pure trash.

How could anyone think that Maxim is anything less than educational. I bet every male at that college has learned about: Foods to Keep You Hard Longer, Getting More Than Drinks at a Party, Wearing Her Panties Makes You Healthy, Best Cars for Sex, Stretching Exercises for the Tongue, and many other needed life topics. You just don't find that kind of material in books.

 

[Closet Desire]

Actually...

...it doesn't sound like the government is the culprit here but a group of PC's at the university. Don't forget that universities are a hot bed of activism that often runs counter to free speech. Many invited speakers, who happen to be controversial, are often booed, picketed, and hooted off the campus by those who disagree.

Same goes for censorship of books in libraries and schools. Seldom is it the government bodies that are doing the censoring but "gangs" of adults with an agenda. More often than not it is the government that most frequently steps in and says censorship is inappropriate. Oh sure, there are lots of politicians that try to enact censorship, but more often than not a court strikes it down...thankfully.

I live in England, with a very liberal attitude toward sex (compared with America that is) but government sponsored censorship is alive and well. A university student was arrested when she took a book by Mapplethorpe to a shop to have copies made for her PhD thesis. The book had been checked out from the university library. The police seized the book, prepared to destroy it, and were stopped when the university made it clear they would pursue every legal means, spare no expense, in preventing it.

Our own books of erotica are published in America because there is no question about the freedom to do so. All the major bookstores in American carry them online and will order them if a customer wants. Here in England they are carried only by Amazon.co.uk. Remember that many writers from England and Europe went to America to write and publish because of censorship here...D.H. Lawrence for example...whose work was censored here until 1964.

Thankfully not all universities are so narrow sighted. I was fortunate enough to attend a Methodist university in the Bible belt that not only allowed me to do research on erotica in literature, but was very pleased when the resulting paper ended up in a major literary journal along with a credit to my department.

Oh well...there's my rant.